


bring your body back to sea level

by endofthought



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-07-24 13:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16176221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofthought/pseuds/endofthought
Summary: "The neck is for her father. The beak is for her mother. The wings were always, always, always Laurel, braided and unbraided across her scalp year after aching year."a season 4 co-telling





	1. june

**Author's Note:**

> rating and warnings are in reference to sara's backstory, which will be addressed more explicitly and directly here than on either show

“Here I thought you gave nightmares, not had them.”

 _Both_ , Sara thought. _It’s both._

But things with Ava were good and bright so she said, “First time for everything,” and tried for honestly about something else instead (that something being her recent encounter with John Constantine).

Things went downhill at a breakneck pace right after, and they all tumbled feet over head until she was covered in blue fur in a crater laughing hard and catching her breath. Jax had a kid. Zari’s loopholes seemed to be paying off. Ava smiled down at her and Sara held tight to their moment on horseback together the same way her arms had gripped Ava’s waist.

* * *

Her father died, not too long after. She does the math in her dead- he’d probably seized around the time she was walking up the back stairwell. He’d been in surgery for two hours. The childish, self-aggrandizing, and self-destructive parts of her all have the same question: was he waiting for her?

Things tear a little bit here. Sara has dreams about time. It folds over in her hands the way her mother used to crease paper.

* * *

She runs.

Not at first. She stays for the funeral and takes aching, clumsy steps with Black Siren. Sara huddles around Dinah’s kitchen table helping she and Dig strategize the Oliver situation. Two days after the funeral, on the first truly hot day of the summer, she, Felicity, and Thea clean out her father’s home. She chooses an empty corner of the bunker to store everything they deem worth keeping (a significant portion of that are the keepsakes Quentin kept from Laurel’s apartment and Sara has a good, nasty cry over them). She insists on walking the full six miles back to Oliver’s place afterward, grateful for the ache in her legs and the sweat dripping in her eyes.

Oliver’s makeshift family is already eating dinner when she finally stumbles in. Felicity smiles at her and nods to the shower upstairs. After toweling her hair dry, Sara goes down in lended pajamas and picks at leftovers while Thea and William do the dishes side by side by hand. Sara and Raisa gang up on Thea by telling William all the embarrassing stories from her preteenhood. She curls up between Thea and Felicity that night and sleeps fitfully with soft, steady breathing on either side of her.

She rises shortly after dawn, packs her duffel bag, and creeps downstairs.

William is on the couch, hand in a bowl of loose cereal, probably watching a Saturday morning cartoon. He sits up a little and bites his lip when he sees her.

“Sorry,” Sara says. She isn’t sure why.

Time is calling, and Sara's never felt comfortable with still hands, so she leaves a warm spot on Oliver Queen's bed next to his little sister and his wife and runs right back to the Waverider and the detached stillness of time. She goes to the ship where the walls hum and voices echo through the vents.

She tries not to think of Laurel or Rip or her father or the league. She charges back into the fray, into the search for escaped magical creatures, and into hot, strings-very-much-attached sex with Ava every other night.

She gets three weeks of peace (in Waverider time, which Gideon is keeping somewhat synced with the 2018 timeline to allow for better communication with their allies). It’s Ava who first notices something awry. Sara wakes one morning to her girlfriend squinting at her face, her expression concerned.

“Nightmare?” Sara guesses. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“No. When did you re-injure your head?” she asked, reaching out to brush Sara’s forehead.

Sara frowns. “I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t notice that I had.”

“It looks pretty gnarly. Bruising, a little bleeding. Same spot. I didn’t see it when I came in last night, how did you pull that off?”

“Huh,” Sara said. She lets Ava rummage through the bedside table drawer for some basic suturing supplies (that they are readily available says a lot about both of their life choices). “I really didn’t notice.”

“I believe you,” Ava says, and her tone is unconcerned and sincere even if Sara is looking at her back.

And that’s the end of of it until thirty-six hours later when they’re in pretty much the same position on the couch in the library. Sara’s nose began to gush blood in the middle of a nap, waking them both up. Sara can feel the mottled bruising covering a good part of the center of her face.

“No,” Ava tells her, before Sara can stammer out some vague joke. “Gideon, something happened while we were sleeping just now. Sara wasn’t hurt when we fell asleep. Did I elbow her?” She already has her eyebrows hiked high on her head in bias against that suggestion.

“Gideon, don’t bother,” Sara mumbles between even breaths, trying to be somewhat dignified and not choke on her own blood.

Ava reaches over and tips her head back like she’s a trainee. “I’m fine,” Sara complains, and lets frustration lend an edge to it. “The bleeding’s already stopping. Leave it be.”

Ava looks upward and to the side as if looking for backup from Gideon, but the A.I. still hasn’t warmed to Ava enough to prioritize her orders.

“Please, Ava,” Sara says. “I’m tired.” It’s not even a little bit of a lie.

Ava isn’t tired. Ava is stumbling through the very beginnings of her personhood. It’s a reclamation, and it’s heady like an electric shock.

Sara knows that feeling and holds it exactly like ice cubes cupped in her hands. Ava curls back around her despite her restlessness, releasing a soft, faintly frustrated breath in the back her neck. Gideon dims the lights in an uncharacteristically silent fashion. They’ll deal with the mess of bloodstained tissues in the morning.

* * *

Fight, flight, or freeze. It's basic, defining, evolutionary shit.

The whole encounter with the Pilgrim plays out behind Sara’s eyes sometimes. It was weird to see bangs and a jean jacket. It was weirder to see her own fearful eyes attached. Behind shut lids, she tries to re-inhabit a worldview in which she willingly runs from something that makes her afraid.

Well, she thinks, she was cuffed and scared and then cut loose. Sometimes you have to run to prove that you can.

But then she thinks of those bangs and wonders about time travel. Not you. You haven't been broken yet, little one. You have to grow up and bite the apple. You have to be punished. You have to learn fear. You have to cause it with your hands and feel the guilt and let it be the blood pumping in your veins. You have to repent, and learn to use soft hands, soft like small fingers reaching through bars and asking with their timidness... _can I touch?_

The neck is for her father. The beak is for her mother. The wings were always, always, always Laurel, braided and unbraided across her scalp year after aching year.

* * *

Sara has always been stubborn. When she was little, she was so stubborn she wouldn’t let on that she was sick or hurt. Her mother used to say, “I have magic hands.”

Sara would say, “No, you don’t.”  
  
Her mother would repeat, “I have magic hands” and hover them over Sara’s body making beeping sounds until she paused at the bruise or headache.

“You have to listen to your body, Sara,” her mother said. “And you have to listen to her heart.”  
  
That’s what her mother whispered in her ear after the funeral, right before she left, and Sara remembered for the first time in years how perfectly their family had always been paired. Laurel was so, so much like their father. Sara and her mother are even more deeply twinned, to the point that intimacy is uncomfortable now.

Sara had listened to her heart intently. She had listened her way onto the Queen’s Gambit and has spent the decade since unlearning and relearning how to listen to her body in the worst ways possible.  
  
So when her mother whipped out that old chestnut, left a lipstick mark on her cheek, and disappeared, Sara felt more unmoored than when Laurel threw a glass at her head. That was what remained of her family. A plea to look within.

When Sara locks herself down in the brig to meditate, it’s not for her mother. She does it for Nyssa. Nyssa her mentor of survival, not Nyssa her girlfriend. Neither would want her to ignore this.

She sits and sits and lets it all rise to the surface. Sara’s wishes stopped having words a long time ago. She breathes in hope and pain and blows it back out without taking any for herself.

She goes in looking for reassurance, and finds none. The bruises on her body are familiar- too familiar. Yesterday she had cried for father harder than the day he had died, completely unprompted. Grief is weird. Sara knows grief. Something else is happening, and it goes against everything she has built herself to be.

She opens her eyes.  
  
“Gideon, I need to get in contact with John Constantine.”


	2. july

The thing about Zari is that she doesn’t love hacking. She doesn’t take much joy in puzzles. She’s not good at finding gaps or drawing lines. Her comfort comes from the steady flow of information being compared, sorted, and filed. That constant hum assures her- she is alert, awake, and present.

Some people have innate talents. Some people have defense mechanisms. In some people, it’s hard to find the line.

Whether Zari loves it or not, the key to solving a problem of any kind is keeping track of your known factors. The thing about Sara that’s slowly driving Zari up the wall is that she’s one massive unknown factor.

When she first arrived on the ship, figuring her captain out wasn’t Zari’s priority. At that point, she trusted Jax’s judgement even more than she trusted Amaya’s, and Jax nearly always backed Sara’s plays. So Zari focused on deciphering her other team members and filed bits of information away as she got them.

After a few weeks, a picture formed. Sara grew up in Star City, pretty normally from what Zari could tell. At some point, she got wrapped up in the League of Assassins, which sucked. (That was one of the first stories Zari heard when she asked Jax about the team’s history. “So Kendra has Sara pinned up on the ceiling, and Rip was freaking out, and then Chronos came in. Wait, no, I missed some stuff. First there was-.”) She left the league. She died. She got brought back to life. She joined the team. Her sister died. They defeated Vandal Savage. Rip disappeared. Sara became captain. It stuck, even after Rip returned.

When Sara got taken out by Nora Darhk, Zari extrapolated a little more information- yes, her captain was willing to step out in front of the team and take the fall. Also, Amaya and Jax were in charge when Sara wasn’t. That was made sense and was useful. She paid more attention to them both.

Iris and Barry’s wedding invitation freaked Zari out. She had signed up for one dorky time travel team, not some weird extended family of superheroes with personal history and tension.

When Nazis invaded, Zari kept listening. When Martin died, Zari kept listening. At the funeral, Zari kept listening. Zari grew up in a police state- she knows that when things go south, you need to keep your ears open. You can't tune anything out.

Oliver. Cisco. Kara. Iris. Dinah. After all was said and done, they topped her list of unknown factors, allies to keep an eye on future encounters.

During the conflict, Sara ceded her authority to the other leaders, only grasping it right before the final push. That confused Zari until she saw the way Sara fell into step by Oliver every so often. They moved like they had fought together before.

The announcement of Felicity and Oliver’s surprise wedding, minutes after they departed, marked the first good laugh the team had together since Martin’s death.

Ray shoved the stationary across the table at Sara, nearly pouting. “Did you see this?”

“Oh.” Sara smiled quietly as she read. “Good for them.”

“They should have done it when everyone was still there! A double superhero wedding.”

“Yeah, I can understand not wanting your ex there.”

“Wait,” Zari asks despite herself. “Whose ex?”

Sara gestured to Ray and herself. “Both of us.

Nate nearly choked on his potatoes. “You dated Oliver?!” then, almost as an afterthought, “I knew about Ray and Felicity.”

Zari had suspected the same, because she’d witnessed a weird exchanged of stiff hugs and good wishes after Martin’s funeral that screamed of two nice exes who couldn't even properly dislike each other.

“Dating Oliver is how I got myself into this whole mess in the first place,” Sara declared. “That and Malcolm fucking Merlyn.”

The conversation halted in its tracks there so they could measure out four shots of vodka and drink to their dead enemy’s very shitty afterlife. Zari clinked her glass of Tang. Ray sputtered and Mick and Nate ganged up to tease him about it. Zari leaned back in her chair and waited for Sara to elaborate, but the conversation never backtracked.

Zari tries to be okay with the information she has, but the thing is, Sara sets the mood. She doesn’t know that she does it, Zari’s certain of that. Ray and Nate can bounce back and forth between isolation and constant dialogue several times in the same week without it affecting anyone else, but Sara’s inner state affects them all like shifts in the air pressure. When she’s settled, the ship works the way it’s supposed to, and they wind back and forth through the halls in predictable if chaotic patterns. But if something rocks them enough to rock Sara, all bets are off, and they’re floundering around. Sara doesn’t go on missions unsettled. If she’s unsettled and action is their best option, she drinks. Sara’s either learned some freaky assassin toxin resistance strategy, or she’s the most functional alcoholic Zari’s ever seen.

Oh, and Ava, as if there weren’t enough factors for Zari to keep track of. Sara is crazy happy with Ava. It was just starting to get properly annoying when one day Ava came onboard and flashed her texts at them to let them know Sara wanted Gideon to fabricate a black dress for her. Sara’s dad was dead, she said. She didn’t give any more details, and Zari suspected she didn’t have them. Ray pushed Ava a little. “I knew her dad. And her sister. I’d like to pay my respects.” So Ray and Ava went to the visitation and sat in the front two rows during the service with the rest of the fractured Team Arrow.

Zari, Mick, and Nate were supposed to find Wally, Iris, Caitlin, and Wally’s dad, Joe. Wally’s hug was more stabilizing than Zari expected it to be, and she made some joke about his outfit to get him to smile wide. She had missed him. Joe kept Mick in his sightline.

The actual service and burial were gigantic- there were citizens, police, and political acquaintances crowded in to pay their respects. The looming press was stationed at a barely respectable distance, shouting frequent questions about Oliver’s incarceration and identity. Zari pressed closer to Nate’s side as they searched for open spots toward the middle. She knew he wouldn’t give her shit about it. Their yells died off as the actual service began.

There were a few rows of chairs, and the rest of the crowd formed a cluster around the site, so Zari actually had a pretty good view of Sara throughout the service. Ava sat in the row behind her next to Ray. Felicity sat to Sara’s left. At Sara’s right was a woman who didn’t seem to know anyone surrounding her but Sara. Zari whispered out loud to no one in particular. “Is that-?”

“Her mom, I think,” Nate says. At least she wasn’t the only one was struggling to keep up. “Must be. But they were divorced. That’s gotta be awkward.”

“The death of a child, though,” cut in Wally’s dad from in front of her. “That’s a different beast. Plenty of strong marriages can’t bounce back from that.”

“They divorced after Laurel died?” Zari asked, trying to do quick mental math.

“No, it must have been Sara. First time around, but she was dead again by the time I met him back in ‘15, ‘16. That was the picture I got, at least.”

“Were you close?” Zari asked, trying to make more conversation. It was better than standing stiff and trying to look respectful.

Joe shook his head. “Only met the guy once, but we texted after.”

“It’s nice of you to come. Especially with the baby at home.” Wally had passed his phone around, displaying pictures of Jenna, tiny and round-cheeked.

Joe faced the grave again. “It’s hard enough to fight your own battles. It’s worse to watch your children have to fight them, too.” Iris, to his left, reached out to grasp his hand.

Up front, Sara’s mom was crying now, but not hard. She dabbed at her cheeks at regular intervals. Ray leaned forward with more tissues, and Zari and Nate shared a glance.

They lowered the casket in with straps and a crank. Before Martin's, every funeral Zari had been to used ropes and hands. There was never a casket.

After service ended, Zari saw Sara let herself be separated off on her own, her mother at her side, to meet with a small group of uniformed men who were speaking earnestly with her. Her expression was more pliant than Zari expected.

Zari’s group fought their way against the flow of the crowd up to Ray and the others. There was a smattering of hugs that Zari stood off to the side for. Ava, out of place, came to stand by her, and they nodded at each other.

“Nice to see you out of the uniform,” Zari commented.

“You’ve seen me out of it before,” Ava replied. So it was guarded Ava they were getting that day.

“How is Sara doing?” Zari asked, softening her tone to make sure Ava knew she was asking as a friend.

“I haven’t had the chance to speak with her much,” Ava admitted. “Her mom is great. It’s been nice to meet her- despite the circumstances.”

“They look alike.”

“They do.”

The uniformed men were dispersing. Sara murmured something to her mom and walked toward their group alone, shoulders loose now. She caught Zari’s gaze and turned an upward circle with her finger.

Zari moved forward, grabbing Mick’s wrist on the way. She knew without looking that Nate and Ray would follow, and she was sure the fourth set of shoes catching on thick grass behind her belonged to Wally.

They stood in a cluster for a moment in front of the grave, together for the first time in a while. Sara looked them over.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said. “I appreciate it. And Ray, thanks for sticking with Ava yesterday.” The visitation. Sara had requested, via Ava, that they skip it.

“Any time,” Ray replied.

“You staying?” Sara asked Wally. “We’d love to have you.”

“Another time,” he replied. “I still have things I need to do.”

Sara made no move cross the patch of grass between them. She stood only a few feet away from her father, but she had been near him all day at the visitation, which was maybe why her spine was straight.

“I need to stay here for a few days to sort things out. Then I’ll be back. Leave me the jumpship. Don’t make too much trouble until then.”

“Who’s in charge?” Ray asked.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be back soon. Just-.” She cracked a pained smile. “Don’t do anything I would do.”

* * *

 

When Sara grabs Zari by the arm about a month after the funeral, Zari expects grief talk. There are bags under Sara’s eyes. They both have dead family and they don’t know how to save their dead family, and Zari can muster up enough empathy to have this conversation, probably, except she dreamed about her brother last night, so she’s a little low on grace and patience.

But instead Sara says, “Come meet Constantine with me. It’ll be super weird. Afterward, you can tell Ava that we kept it professional.”

Zari is down for that. “Gary said he has a goat.”

There is no goat in the seedy pub they ended up meeting him at. He’s chain smoking at the table, and he must have an arrangement with the staff because they say nothing about it.

“Ms. Lance,” he greets. “Ms. Tomaz. How are the beasties treating you?”

“Badly,” Zari complains. They only had a dozen or so magic-fueled encounters under their belt, but each had put up a fight. “It would be easier if we had our magic guy actually with us, instead of just sending homework along.”

He took another pull off his cigarette and turned to Sara as she pulled out a seat. “Are you using your team against me now, too? Sorry love, I have better things to do than clean up your lot’s mess.”

“We have a problem,” Sara announced.

“You always do.”

“We need you to identify a curse.”

Zari looked up from the menu. “We do?”

“We do.”

Constantine leaned in. “What are we talking? A creature? Or have you gotten yourself tangled up with another magic user?”

“I don’t know,” Sara admitted.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t when the curse was...cursed. I don’t- it’s me, John. I need to know if it has to do with being possessed by Mallus, or if it was a selkie or something.”

A waitress approached them and introduced herself, taking their orders. Sara ordered a whiskey. Constantine tapped his cigarette on the ashtray, presumably one he had brought himself.

“Are you going to elaborate on that?” Constantine asked after the waitress was out of earshot.

“My injuries are reoccurring. I got this nasty black eye a few weeks again. It healed up fine, and then all of the sudden it was back like I got hit again. I’ve always got something healing, I didn’t think much of it but it keeps happening. I wake up with old injuries.”

“You should have said something,” Zari cut in. She’s a bit pissed.

Sara shot her a look. “It sounds crazy.”

“Everything we say all day long sounds crazy.”

“And you think it’s a curse?” John asks.

“I wasn’t sure,” Sara admitted. “Then I realized that whatever is happening is messing with my emotions, too.”

“What’s it doing?”

“The same thing. I don't know. I can't explain it.”

“That’s a little more tricky,” John says. He’s not looking Sara in the eye.

“You don’t believe her,” Zari accuses. If Sara wants backup, she can be backup.

“I believe she’s not one to make a fuss unless something is amiss. What’s truly happening here…I’m not so sure,” he says.

Sara shoves a jump-drive across the table at him, the kind that Gideon fabricates with an insane amount of storage. “I had Gideon monitor me while I slept last night. Nothing major happened- a couple of bruises- but she isn’t able to tell what caused them. This is the data, everything she knows about what’s happening.”

John lights another cigarette. “Alright, love, if what’s happening hasn’t escalated, I see no reason for panic. It could be a haunting. I can come by, burn something in your quarters.”

“I slept in the med bay last night, for the scan. I really-” The waitress comes back before she can continue. She sets a plate of nachos down in front of Zari, warning about the hot plate. Sara’s whiskey is a double. John sticks to his water.

Zari watches the two of them sit in silence like tennis while she eats. Finally, John cracks and pockets the jump-drive.

“Thank you,” Sara says.

“Will that run on Windows?”

“No clue,” Sara replies at the same time Zari says, “Yes.”

John points at Zari. “You. You and my main man Ray figure out everything that’s touched her since she set foot on that ship, and start tracking her injuries.”

“Thank you, John,” Sara says. He’s already rising to leave.

“I’ll give it a look see,” he says. “I’m not promising anything.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Sara insists. She and Zari both look over their shoulders to watch him exit. Sara gets up and moves to his side of the table, probably because it puts her back against the wall. She downs her drink in one gulp and digs into the nachos.

“At least he didn’t leave us with a bill,” Zari comments.

“Thank you for backing me up,” Sara says.

“I’d love a little warning next time,” Zari replies.

“I know. That’s why I’m thanking you.”

The lunch rush is beginning. Zari chases one last lump of cheese and olives down with her chip.

* * *

 

Taking her problem to Ray and setting him to work is the deep breath Sara doesn’t know she needs until she takes it. Suddenly it’s not this eerie, too close thing happening to her brain and body. Instead, it’s mission file, one of the dozens they’re juggling around. They have to do research now before heading into the field. John has been recommending books by the armful.

She lets go. The only problem is that Ava won’t doing the same, and judging by the attention Zari has started to pay her, she’s won’t either.

Sara can’t blame them, especially Zari, who knows the ship’s history well enough by now. There are two ways to get off the Waverider- the path of Kendra, Jax, and Amaya, or the path of Leonard, Martin, and Rip.

Why would Sara ever leave? Where else would she go?

One day, Sara will die for her team. She knows that deep in her bones, and she’s more than okay with her. It’s what she has freely chosen.

She has died twice before at the hands of a brainwashed friend for no good reason at all. Laying down her life for all the love she has left and all of the good she’s managed to wring out of her hands doesn’t sound bad, by any means.

Except...well. That’s assuming that she, the bearer of the death totem, can ever really stop.

For now, she keeps living her life, the kind where peace feels like recklessness.


End file.
